Book Club Kits

In a major novel unlike anything he has written before, John Grisham takes the reader on an incredible journey, from the Jim Crow South to the jungles of the Philippines during World War II; from an insane asylum filled with secrets to the Clanton courtroom where upstanding citizen and World War II hero Pete Banning's defense attorney tries desperately to save him from conviction for the murder of the esteemed Reverend Bell, the most mysterious and unforgettable crime Ford County had ever known.
 

The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, how these reactions maintain racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.
 

Twelve Native Americans came to the Big Oakland Powwow for different reasons. As we learn the reasons that each person is attending--some generous, some fearful, some joyful, some violent--momentum builds toward a shocking yet inevitable conclusion that changes everything.  
 

Many of us believe in equality, diversity, and inclusion, but how do we stand up for those values in our turbulent world? Chugh reveals the surprising causes of inequality, and offers practical tools to respectfully and effectively talk politics with family, to be a better colleague to people who don't look like you, and to avoid being a well-intentioned barrier to equality. Being the person we mean to be starts with a look at ourselves.
 

A deeply moving and resonant story of love, identity, and belonging, A Place for Us follows an Indian family through the marriage of their daughter, from the parents' arrival in the United States to the return of their estranged son.
 

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved.

An in-depth look at pregnancy through a scientific and feminist lens that challenges popular assumptions, offers help for navigating contradictions, and provides facts to aid with making informed decisions.

Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University.

Based on one of America's most notorious real-life scandals in which the director of a Memphis adoption organization kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country, Wingate's wrenching and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though our paths can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.

An unforgettable and sweeping novel about one classic film actress's relentless rise to the top, the risks she took, the loves she lost, and the long-held secrets the public could never imagine.

Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany's defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband's ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband's brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.

This story of a community and a family, whose attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby dramatically divides the town, explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood - and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

Kim Phúc, informally known as “the Napalm Girl,”  was immortalized as a badly burned child running from a bombing in one of the most horrifying, iconic images of the Vietnam war. Yet despite the physical and emotional pain she suffered, this memoir details how she found faith, forgiveness, and peace.
 

After her father's death, Nikki, a modern young Punjabi woman, takes a job teaching creative writing. The Sikh widows who show up expect an English literacy course. But Nikki never expected what she would learn from them. This lively, sexy, and thought-provoking debut novel is about community, friendship, and women's lives at all ages.

On February 22, 1862, two days after his death, Willie Lincoln was laid to rest in a marble crypt in a Georgetown cemetery. That very night, shattered by grief, Abraham Lincoln arrives at the cemetery under cover of darkness and visits the crypt, alone, to spend time with his son's body. The bold, imaginative first novel from critically acclaimed author Saunders.

A coming-of-age novel about the sexual awakening of a middle-aged woman, Mrs. Fletcher is a provocative, witty look at contemporary sexual politics and timeless moral dilemmas - a moving and funny examination of sexuality, identity, and the big clarifying mistakes people can make when they’re no longer sure who they are and where they belong.
 

When Miss Norma was diagnosed with uterine cancer, she was advised to undergo surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. But instead of confining herself to a hospital bed for what could be her last stay, Miss Norma--newly widowed after nearly seven decades of marriage--told her doctor, "I'm ninety years old. I'm hitting the road." And so Miss Norma took off on an unforgettable around-the-country journey in a thirty-six-foot motorhome with her retired son Tim, his wife Ramie, and their dog Ringo. This book was the 2018 Fond du Lac Reads selection. 

A portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come, written by two-time Pulitzer-Prize finalist and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Dan Egan. Chosen as the 2018-2019 UW-Madison Go Big Read selection.

After a tragic hunting accident in which Landreaux Irons accidentally shoots and kills his neighbor’s five-year-old-son, the recovered alcoholic turns to an Ojibwe tribe tradition - the sweat lodge - for guidance, and finds a way forward. Following an ancient means of retribution, he and his wife will give their own five-year-old-son, LaRose, to their grieving neighbors to raise as their own. 
 

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
 

In the Rust Belt town of North Bath, New York, police chief Doug Raymer is convinced he’s ‘everyone’s fool’ as he grapples with the revelation his now-dead wife cheated on him, engages in an ongoing feud with the curmudgeon Sully Sullivan and otherwise tries to maintain order in a town filled with down-on-their-luck but lovable characters. 

When Joel, whose then-7-year-old brother was kidnapped in a Stockholm subway station in 1970, suddenly goes missing, his wife reaches out to an old friend for help. Danny Katz, a brilliant computer programmer and recovering heroin addict, as well as a divorced father of two young girls, begins to dig behind the digital veil in search of Joel, even though the investigation quickly interferes with his duties as a parent.

In this novel, set in Northern California in 1969, and based loosely on the stories of Charles Manson’s followers, a disaffected and lonely teenager meets a group of girls who follow a manipulative, charismatic, and dangerous man, and joins them.

In this humorous novel about a dysfunctional family, three siblings find that their reckless brother has drained the $2 million dollar bank account their father left them at his death, money they have all been planning to use to solve their own financial problems. 

This novel follows the fate of two half-sisters born in eighteenth century Ghana, and their descendants.  One sister marries the British head of a slave trading colony, while the other is captured in the same colony and sold into American slavery. 

The author of this memoir was a neurosurgeon who was diagnosed with lung cancer in his mid-thirties. Writing in his last months of life, he talks about his childhood and college studies, explains why he decided to become a doctor, and describes his experiences with his illness. 

An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world.

The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society.

A workaholic with a too-good-to-be-true romance can't stop thinking about her first love in this unforgettable tale of love that comes at the ultimate price.